Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O'Connor

Passages analyzing wages and life expectancy during Jefferson's time are woven through excerpts taken from Jefferson's real-life anti-slavery treatises, 'A Summary View of the Rights of British North America' (1774) and 'Notes on the State of Virginia' (1785). And so we get hyper-realistic, historically accurate scenes at Monticello and in Paris juxtaposed against a continuous thread of Hemings' fictitious journal entries ('one's very desire to live a decent and ordinary life can be an unending source of humiliation') and passages from the memoirs of other slaves. O'Connor incorporates historically accurate details - for example, Jefferson's arc from traumatic childhood through his death, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence - then adds a post-modern twist, imbuing the novel with the compelling chaos of a fever dream. And successful doesn't begin to describe the wildly imaginative techniques he used to realize his authorial goal, which is clearly to humanize - equalize, you might say - the two members of this passionate, conflicted couple: the lionized, hypocritical Jefferson, who railed against slavery while owning slaves, and the powerful yet complicit Hemings, who loved and loathed her owner. Ambitious doesn't begin to describe the scope of the project O'Connor undertook.

Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O

But the white person who writes a 624-page novel about the 37-year love affair between a white slave owner - who happens to be the third president of the United States and author of the phrase 'All men are created equal' - and a mixed-race slave - whom he happens to own and who happens to give birth to six of his children - had better have the politics, the courage and, most importantly, the storytelling skills to get it right.įortunately, O'Connor manifests an abundance of these qualities in 'Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings,' his debut novel.

'Anyone has the right to write about any subject available to be written about,' historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Author Stephen O'Connor (Ema O'Connor photo)

Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O'Connor